I think our country is paying for the lack of (scientific) education. Just the sheer number of doctors that don't understand basic stuff, such as exponential functions, is mind-boggling. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Everything else is a consequence of (scientific) illiteracy, including the lack of critical thinking. Hence people can be easily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians, hence the quality of the people running the country, hence everything else flowing from there. We simply don't know what the word "technocrat" means, because we are more interested in the Kardashians than our Nobel prize winners. Hence we are not led based on expert advice, but suggestions from brown-nosing sycophants.
The empire is falling because the quality of its citizens is dropping. Who the heck bothers to read the Harvard Classics at least, anymore, even among "college" graduates? Or at least the Roman philosophers? Or at least Feynman's famous friggin' lecture books, to understand how the friggin' world works? Or just a book, any book? And so on. It's just eating, drinking, sex, and entertainment; bread and circuses, and we elect our leaders accordingly. We are "educated" by the good-looking or angry scientific illiterates on TV and social media. The blind leading the blind.
That's where the Chinese (and other Asians) are light years ahead of the decadent West. That's why they dominate the STEM fields in American universities. And that's one reason why quarantine works in Asia, even in more democratic countries than China. They UNDERSTAND what it is about. And they trust their experts, because they know enough science to know when they are (not) being lied to. The US and Europe are going to hell (not just Covid-wise), while Asia is rising.
Which are the countries/communities which (will) have the biggest problems? The least scientifically-educated ones, including the retrograde. It's the 21st century, for God's sake; even the Pope is a fan of science and evolution. (By the way, one cannot understand viruses if one doesn't understand evolution.) That's what we're paying for today, our ignorance, our arrogance. There is no American exceptionalism anymore; that belonged to much better generations, which are passing away (including with Covid-19).
We cannot even count on the dum-dums being good lambs and listening to the more educated among us (like those successful Asian nations do), at least in the eleventh hour. The solution is not autocracy, but possibly
epistocracy - government by the knowledgeable.
